


Your Name?

by damozel



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen, One Shot, POV First Person, brief mentions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 15:58:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4752329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damozel/pseuds/damozel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the run up to John and Mary's wedding a simple question opens a can of worms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Name?

'Your name, madam?' asks the secretary, smiling absently at the middle-aged couple who have come in to complete the necessary forms.

_My name?_

It's hard to know where to begin, I've had so many over the years.

Questions like this shouldn't be a problem. I've pretended for so long that I should be able to answer her in my sleep. Then occasionally someone catches me off guard, and my mask wobbles for a moment or two. The door to my memories is nudged open. 

Names are potent things after all.

*

They called me Vesna when I was still a novice in Belgrade. I enjoyed the sound of that, at the time. Like a water droplet falling from the tap, making contact with the smooth, hard granite beneath. Or the click-clack of heels running across the pavement like me and my girlfriends did in our early teens, full of vodka and giggles and fear of what our fathers would say if they found out. I dreamed of that name the other night. Only in this version it sounded more like the click of a safety catch being removed, a barrel being aligned. 

Ves-na. 

Goddess of youth and spring. And Slavic sounding enough to pass muster.  
That's why I chose it.

There were other names, of course. During my Continental years I was briefly a Simone. A name with intellectual pretensions, or so I always thought. All very well for discreet meetings over coffee in some café off the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Or for blending in at the right kind of dinner party. Parties where valuable information might be exchanged during a quick grope under the table, followed by a warm slug of cognac. Less so for the bloodier end of my business. You wouldn't hire a girl named Simone to pull off a hit.

After running from France, my charms never really passed muster with the Italians. With my pasty face and pale blonde bob, they knew I couldn't be a "Federica". Then there are always men who prefer a fake to the real thing. The bosses tolerated my presence in the end, but thank God they never guessed my true name or I wouldn't be standing here today, with my John.

By my true name I mean the one my parents chose for me on a freezing night in the depth of the Moscow winter, as they crouched over my crib in the municipal hospital. I was packed in tightly with blankets, smothered with love. At least that's the version of the story I like to tell to myself before I go to sleep. When I wrap myself up in my lover's body and the rest of the world seems to melt away. 

Even now I can't tell you the words that were written on my tiny plastic wristband when I was only a few hours old. But the initials are important. A.G.R.A.

*

'I'm sorry. Your name miss?', repeats the parish secretary, bemused by my long silence.

'Mary Elizabeth Morstan', I reply, crinkling my nose at John before turning to the warm-eyed woman before us. She is obviously rather taken with the doctor and his fiancée. 

'That's Elizabeth with a “z” not an “s”. Do make sure it's spelled correctly on the marriage register'.


End file.
